Fun facts: the UK has crazy laws protecting trees and hedgerows. There’s a national tree registry for old boys.
wait so, can i just deed the title of my land to my land upon my death? Is that something i can just fucking do?
As long as enough of town decides to go along with it. If the town decides you were a coot and would rather have a gas station, the tree is fucked.
i see. So basically i just gotta convince the local government that my land is now community land dedicated to third space activities, and owned by itself. I can troll generations for generations to come. Wonderful.
I do like the info, I’m failing to see the science aspect, and even the meme aspect of this post. But I’m in the ‘microblog doesn’t equal meme’ camp.
I’m in the Dawkins definition of meme camp. Memes are a funny thing, pun intended. :)
Dawkin’s definition had nothing to do with humor. His definition was an idea that is spread through society. Its the intellectual equivalent to genes.
The ‘not science’ part is what irked me and I tagged that on for laughs and irrelevant discussion (as is the following I’m not mad, but like to dabble in pedantry today):
But on that part, in the old days the dawkinsian meme was misappropriated to denote a specific image format. Of course it is a Dawkinsian one, too as it is a vector of ideas.
Then it got misappropriated again as ‘any funny image on the internet’, including microblogs, like you seen to defend. You then use the argument that it’s a meme in the Dawkinsian manner (and you’d be technically correct).
But using that logic anything in any medium is a meme. I could upload a Gilbert Gottfried narration of Atlas Shrugged, a clay tablet or the transcripts of all of money pythons movies and sketches. That would all be Dawkinsian memes, and debatebly funny, however not the kind the people here are interested in seeing.
So in in the camp ‘a meme means an image with caption’ and not micro blogs, otherwise anything goes.
Thanks for entertaining my diatribe.
I think conservation techniques can count as science. If it was a rare species, the science connection would be more obvious
Tree law continues to be the wildest
Is this outrage bait from other outrage bait forming an outrageception or ragechain or am I too long online today?
Besides where are the scientists
We all need grass time, sometimes. :)
I don’t think it’s crazy at all to protect trees. We need them. What baffles me is how much we rely on them and still cut whole swaths of them down anyway without a thought.
Study after study has shown that trees in cities offer huge benefits: offering shade and cooling (reducing energy consumption), draining storm/flood water (very useful in our more extreme climate), cleaning the air and emitting oxygen, homing wildlife, improving mental health by reducing anxiety and depression, being nice to look at.
Every city tree should be treasured and protected.
It boggles my mind we feel the need to box ecology and not consider agency for any of the other parts that make life itself possible.
I get a lot of flack for my belief in other animals deserving agency. You’re the first person that’s ever agreed with me on that. Usually people get aggressive and call me names, and tell me I’m crazy, or a wack job, or any other number of names.
People like that fundamentally do not understand nature. It’s like an engine, a procees, not a thing.
Based Georgia!
You love to see it.
Land shouldn’t be owned by humans. Period.
Incredible self-owns of history.
Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive and change lol lol lol
Like abortion? Thank goodness we repealed Roe Vs Wade
Go back to Reddit
The definitions of living, breathing, and life form would probably help
Fetuses aren’t living and don’t breathe. They can’t live on their own and all their chemicals come from another human being (via the umbilical cord). This is opposed to the tree, which isn’t reliant on a certain being and instead gets its nutrients by itself through its roots and get oxygen for respiration & carbon dioxide for photosynthesis by itself, not an umbilical cord.
Trees are undeniably far more independent and living than a fetus. You’re kind of a weirdo for thinking some random small clump of cells is actually equivalent to a human child. I bet I could find basically the same thing in my back yard if I looked hard enough.
Trees are undeniably far more independent and living than a human.
I mean I can cut down all the trees I want so I’m not sure that’s true
You could also cut down ppl, if they weren’t interdependent and interacting with each other enough to realise fast enough and start retaliating.
One of the big factors making humans (and animals in general) have power over the trees is, that we are faster, both at action and adaptation, thanks to our superior mechanisms of Central Nervous System and Muscular systems.But at the same time, any single human would be much more dependent upon trees in general, as compared to how much a single tree would be, upon us, or other animals. Since the seed stage of the plant is sturdy enough to let it choose its starting point, all it really needs is for the place it chose to remain within a reasonable range of the germination conditions (soil, water, air, insolation quality etc.) and it will be just fine.
Please learn empathy.
The story of the Tree That Owns Itself is widely known and is almost always presented as fact. Only one person—the anonymous author of “Deeded to Itself”—has ever claimed to have seen Jackson’s deed to the tree. Most writers acknowledge that the deed is lost or no longer exists—if in fact it ever did exist. Such a deed would have no legal effect. Under common law, the recipient of a piece of property must have the legal capacity to receive it, and the property must be delivered to—and accepted by—the recipient.[6] Both are impossible for a tree to do, as it isn’t a legal person.
[…]
“However defective this title may be in law, the public recognized it.”[11] In that spirit, it is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself.[12] It is the policy of the city of Athens to maintain it as a public street tree.[13]
[…]
Although the story of the Tree That Owns Itself is more legend than history, the tree has become, along with the University Arch and the Double-Barreled Cannon, one of the most recognized and well-loved symbols of Athens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself
In reality, the tree is not protected by law, but by the will of the people. Kind of symbolic if you ask me.
We should really have representatives for non humans in government that are meant to function at an economic loss/investment as a way of giving back. Too often these departments get pushed to deliver ecosystem services. We need to learn to give back without it being transactional. Make gift culture great again. Elect a Lorax.
It’s called environmental protection groups, animal rights groups, etc. Plenty don’t want to listen, though
I mean literally representatives like senators not interest groups.
Who is going to keep them accountable? Trees have a record high abstention rate, and if these representatives are elected by humans that’s just proportional voting with veneer on top.
Democracy is about balancing levers, and that’s why there is more than one branch of government. Special interest groups do have power, and so does the judiciary (who may sue the government for unlawful cutting down of trees) and the executive (who may have power to declare certain government-owned land to be Protected).
The real ecologist move would be to write a duty to protect the environment into the constitution, so that the judiciary can strike down any law that does anything to the contrary.
I believe at least one state—Wyoming, maybe—has a guarantee in its constitution that citizens will have a clean and healthy environment, or something along those lines. It effectively creates a duty to protect the environment.
Edit: it’s Montana.
I was going to say, definitely not Wyoming. Too many oil and gas companies absolutely destroy the areas they are in. I lived in Edgerton for a bit, there is literally no potable water in town, you will make yourself incredibly sick drinking out of the tap because of the drilling in the area. That’s just one of very many examples.
You may like Bruno Latour and his rather philosophical book Politics of Nature. I read it in a philosophy seminar and it seemed fascinating how the author tries to completely overthrow the view we have on “nature” and give it agency.
Yes thank you. This is more helpful than you realise.
Can I just get Danny DeVito?
I would argue most things in government should be ran in the black or red. There’s just a certain type of person who wants to turn everything Into a for profit.
Nothing is protected by law, everything protected is by the will of the people
What if the deed was the friends we made along the way?
Deeds are written on paper. The real deed was inside the tree all along.
A friend in need is a friend in deed…
I’m pretty sure there’s a quirk in marriage and inheritance law that leads to a concept called a pregnant fetus
The trees owned the lands until the humans took it from them.
Humans:
The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?
-Tuck Everlasting
Dude’s lived how ever many hundred years and never even heard of mineral rights, smh.
Well, at least in my country, only what’s above the ground.
Nah, more like rented their place until they could give back to the earth with the ultimate sacrifice.
Isn’t that what we all do though?
Humans are bizarrely fond of stuffing their dead with preservatives, hermetically sealing them in a box, and/or incinerating them. Like, it’s our last chance to give a little bit back to nature, but nope.
How’s incinerating bad? Unless you’re keeping the leftovers I guess
That just delays things ultimately
With all the crap we put in ourselves it’s a good thing we slow down that process, like the casing of a slow action pill
Are they sure the original Tree that Owned Itself was the mother of the Son of the Tree that owned itself? Or did some whore squirrel just deposit the acorn near the stump?
Have they done a DNA test to confirm that the son has a legal stake in the property?
Now the son is young, dumb, and full of pollen. He’s gotta be spreading it as far as the wind will take it. What will happen when he inevitably dies and his estate has to be settled??
Doubt that asshole paid taxes.
How dose inheritance work for trees that are people?
It generally doesn’t. You can create a trust for non-persons, but there are a bunch of rules about how it can be established, how long it can exist, etc.
